Page 10 of The Claiming of the Shrew
If the man was a jellyfish shifter, she didn’t know how to react to that. Supportiveness? Probably? Could jellyfish even live on land?
Also, lying in a sleeping bag on the ground was really uncomfortable. And colder than she had thought it would be.
She finally fell asleep in the middle of wondering if she ought to go over there and sneak into his room while the window was open and he was presumably out being nefarious somewhere.
The next thing she knew, the camp was starting to wake up, and she found out tents weren’t soundproof in the slightest, and the canvas walls did nothing to keep the morning sun out.
“You couldn’t have slept worse than I did,” Joy said. She looked wistfully at Leah’s coffee and picked up her orange juice instead. She had banned herself from caffeine as soon as she’d found out she was pregnant. “I know that it’s too early in the pregnancy to be needing to get up and use the bathroom ten times a night, but tell that to the bean. Which I guess is what we’re calling it, because I told Bar that and he couldn’t stop laughing and then he said that’s its name now.”
“Hnnghh.”
“Drink your coffee.” Joy gazed longingly at it. “Before I steal it. By the way, you weren’t sneaking around the lodge last night, were you?”
“What?” Leah demanded, righteous indignation rousing her from her half-asleep stupor. “Of course not. Why would I do such a thing?” What a good idea; she’d have to do it tonight.
“I thought I heard footsteps at odd hours, that’s all. And maybe something skittering around on the drain pipes. Scratching sounds, like something with claws was climbing the building.”
“You know that part’s not me,” Leah said. “If it’d been me, you would have heard skitteringandrolling.”
Joy said in horror, “Your shrewmobile can’t go up the wall, can it?”
“Not yet, but that’s a great idea. Thanks, Joy.”
A few more swallows of coffee, plus a fruit and whipped-cream laden waffle, got Leah’s brain working again, and she began to wonder where Fawkes was this morning. However,she was distracted from this pleasant musing when Alana, the stage manager, came in, half-running, and hurried over to the table where Maggie was. As she leaned down and whispered something, the table erupted in a babble of concerned chatter. Leah pulled herself to her feet and reached for her crutches.
“Sorry, gotta run, I think something’s happening.”
“If you need me later, I’ll be up at Bar’s and my place for most of the day,” Joy said. She and her mate were fixing up his old family home on the mountainside.
“Sure, whatever.” Leah’s attention was on the theater crew. They were all on their feet now. Gloria looked visibly distressed, Maggie angry.
When Leah arrived, Maggie was saying, “I want everyone’s whereabouts last night accounted for. Especially the new people.”
“You don’t think it was someone in the company, do you?” Halstadt asked in his deep drawl.
“What happened?” Leah asked, inserting herself.
Maggie turned to her, eyes wide. “We’ve been sabotaged.”
Outside, the fresh morning sun gleamed through the trees, gilding a veneer of beauty over the mess around the Darling set.
“I don’t think the damage is too bad,” Maggie said, picking up a cut rope. “We can fix it pretty easily. But who on earth would do such a thing?”
It looked as if someone had gone around the Darling set pulling down sheets, cutting ropes, knocking over furniture, and otherwise wrecking the place. If there had been high winds last night, Leah thought it could easily have been the weather. But sleeping outside in her tent, or more accurately tossing andturning and failing to sleep, she would definitely have noticed a sudden storm.
Odd that she hadn’t noticed this, she mused, picking up a chair. Someone had trashed the set, but they had done it quietly, trying not to disturb the people in the tents and trailers nearby.
She tried not to think—but immediately thought it anyway—that she had just been showing Fawkes around. He could easily have done this.
But why would he do it? That was the inexplicable part.
Well, if he is the thief, he might’ve had all kinds of reasons,she thought. To cover up another theft, for example. Or to give everyone something else to worry about, if they thought they had bigger problems than a few missing items.
But this felt different, she mused, looking around. There was real anger here. If whoever had done this was sincere, not just trying to throw them off the scent of the thefts, theydidactually have bigger problems.
“Leah, can I talk to you for a minute?” Maggie asked.
They left the rest of the crew busily moving objects back to their previous locations and pulling down ropes to replace them. (Gloria wasn’t pitching in, Leah couldn’t help noticing; heaven forbid the star should get her hands dirty doing actual work.) Maggie hustled her off behind some trees, near the site of last night’s now-cold bonfire.
